Canadian Politics Today

Ideology and Threat Assessment

Does ideology affect assessment of the threat of violent extremism? A survey of law enforcement agencies in the
United States in 2014 offers a comparison suggesting a small but statistically significant effect: Political attitudes were
correlated with assessment of threats posed by Muslim extremists, and threat assessment was not correlated with the
number of Muslim Americans who had engaged in violent extremism within the agency’s jurisdiction. By contrast, the
perceived threat of right-wing terrorism was correlated with the number of incidents of right-wing violence and not
with political attitudes. These findings reflect the context of growing polarization of attitudes toward Muslims in the
United States as well as the challenge of bringing counterterrorism policies into proportion with the actual scale of
violent extremism.

The article goes on to make these points:
- After 9/11, International Terrorism (aka Islamic Terrorism) was considered to be massive threat and experts claimed 100s of Al-Queda linked attacks were imminent. In actual fact, between 2003 and 2012, there were 40 prosecutions, most of them involving people trying to travel overseas.  Officials then claimed that the threat was not from 'oversees' after all, but an even larger threat was from homegrown terrorists, either acting alone or loosely affiliated.   Neither has that claim been substantiated either by the number of arrests or attacks carried out.

- In 2009, a department of Homeland Security identified right-wing terrorism as a growing threat; Conservative complaints resulted in the retraction of that report and that office was closed down. 

- Various tracking agencies show more right-wing attacks or plots than Muslim attacks or plots; overall, right-wing attacks have resulted in more deaths than Islamic attacks.

- At under 1%, Neither Islamic nor right-wing attacks or fatalities are a very large percentage of violence in America.

- Because of the similarities between Islamic attacks and right-wing attacks, they provide good contrast for comparing how ideologies are used to define threats.

- As political polarization has increased in the States, so has anti-Muslim sentiment and the perception of Islamic terrorism as a threat increased.

- This polarization and anti-Muslim sentiment coincided with a campaign to cast suspicion on to Muslims, and to paint Liberals as supporters of terrorism; the campaign was funded by conservative foundations and donors. 

- The campaign has been pretty successful; people are very concerned about Islamic terrorism, not very concerned about right-wing terrorism, even though the right-wing terrorism is more likely than Islamic terrorism.

- Over this time period, support for freedom of religion in the States has declined among both liberals and conservatives.  Freedom of religion used to be a bedrock of democracy and freedom.

I understand that this information will not change anyone's mind, and that's too bad.  We in the West are headed nowhere good, imo, but at least in 50 or 75 years, when some government is apologizing to Muslims for their over-zealous elimination of an Islamic non-threat, I will have been on the right side of the moral line.